


Wet Nose, Warm Heart

by Pollydoodles



Series: The Wider Pizza-Verse [13]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 18:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9562028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollydoodles/pseuds/Pollydoodles
Summary: Well, someone told Bucky about Valentine's Day.





	

“Uh-”

Steve pushed a hand back through his blond hair, ruffling it slightly, as he came to a halt at the threshold of his living room. He was almost certain that it hadn’t been pink when he’d gone to bed the night before, but given that he’d crawled into bed in the early hours, half-dead from exhaustion and a mission that wouldn’t quit, he wasn’t sure to trust his eyes. 

“Buck?”

The dark haired man did not react to his name, cross-legged in the middle of the floor with Steve’s coffee table pushed to one side and a small mountain of pink paper stacked to one side of him. The fat labrador wearing an increasingly small hi-vis jacket, however, thumped his tail enthusiastically from where he was sprawled on the floor next to Bucky. 

Steve sighed, and twisted on his heel, aiming for the kitchen. 

Ten minutes later, feeling slightly more awake and a half-empty cup of coffee ready to push him through the rest of it, Steve felt more equipped to deal with the situation. He dropped himself into a sitting position next to Bucky on the floor, the dog creeping forward to drop his chin onto Steve’s knee. 

One hand fondling the dog’s ears, the other raising the cup to his mouth, Steve took a long drag before trying again. 

“Pink?”

This time, Bucky looked up at him, and Steve saw a hint of surprise flash through the other man’s eyes before a slow smile crept across his face. Bucky had the unerring ability to focus completely on the task at hand, something he’d had a touch of before the war and had only increased since. It had made him an excellent sniper, but an awkward conversationalist. 

“Pink,” he agreed solemnly, nodding with a considered movement, and Steve realised that the other man was holding scissors in one hand and pink card in the other. Jigsaw puzzle pieces lumbered towards each other in his mind, in an attempt to fill in the gaps.

“Are you…” Steve began, sitting up a little straighter, realisation dawning upon him all at once. “Are you making Valentine’s Day hearts?”

Bucky smiled wider, grinning back at him from behind a curtain of dark hair that he steadfastedly refused to cut. The closest he’d come was to let Darcy tidy up the ends so that it didn’t fall completely into his eyes. Steve was sure that Darcy could have pushed the point if she’d wanted to, certain that Bucky would have surrendered to the girl. 

It was one of the reasons that Steve liked Darcy so much. That there was much sway she held over Bucky, knowingly or unknowingly, and Steve all too aware that she’d never use it. There are, she’d told him once, way too many people in the world keen to get you to do what they think is best, and not realising that what’s best is for you to make your choice. 

So she gave Bucky choices, and he chose. 

And sometimes it meant that she could tidy up the ends of his hair, or get him into a sweater, and sometimes it meant they ate potato wedges for a week straight. But mostly it meant that Bucky - who had lived most of his life with no choice at all - was in charge of what happened to him. 

“Yes,” Bucky answered, bringing Steve sharply back to the matter at hand. “Hearts.”

He thrust one from the pile he’d been creating, scattered at his feet, toward Steve, who took it and frowned. Tilting his head to one side, he squinted at the lurid pink shape in his hand. 

“Uh, Buck?” 

Bucky, returning to the task at hand, grunted softly in response to demonstrate that he had, in fact, heard. Scissors snipped efficiently at the card in his hand, little flakes of card dusting over his crossed legs as he worked. 

“They’re a bit, uh, a bit…” Steve trailed off, one hand drifting from where he’d been petting Lucky - the dog whining and tapping his knee with one large paw in protest at the loss - to rub at the back of his neck as he considered his next words. 

“They’re a bit… anatomically correct?”

He blinked down at the card in front of him, which perfectly replicated the size and shape of a human heart, valves, arteries and aorta included. Bucky shrugged, apparently unconcerned. Steve tried again. 

“It’s just that, you know, traditionally speaking, a Valentine’s heart looks like - well, it looks like -” Steve, finding himself a somewhat of a loss, grabbed up a pencil from the coffee table and sketched a quick cartoon heart on one of the uncut cards, holding it up for his friend. 

“See?”

Bucky stared at it, then down at the pile of card he’d already cut. 

“That’s not what a heart looks like,” he said, gesturing to Steve’s drawing with his scissors. The blond glanced down at his sketch, eyebrows knitting together as he considered it from his upside-down vantage point. 

“No, well, no it doesn’t, but that’s not the-” 

“This is a heart,” Bucky continued, holding up one of his own in each hand. His blue eyes were earnest as they looked back at Steve, who swallowed and wondered how he could explain to his literal-minded friend. 

“Yes,” Steve began carefully. “But, for Valentine’s day-”

“I’ve seen hearts,” Bucky said decidedly, staring down at the card in each hand, and that drew the conversation to a startling close. “This is definitely a heart.”

Steve closed his eyes briefly and fought the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. The image of the common room being strewn with anatomically correct paper-card hearts in bright pink flashed through his mind, and he suppressed the need to laugh out loud. 

Darcy was just gonna get what she was given. 

“Okay, pal,” Steve said, opening his eyes again with a grin. “Need any help?”

Bucky glanced down at the paper surrounding him, the scissors in one hand and the hearts now grasped in the other. He huffed out a little sigh and Steve could see him thinking hard on the question. 

Finally, he looked back up at Steve. 

“You know where I can get a bear?”


End file.
